9 December 2013 - WORKPLACES of FAMOUS AUTHORS

WORKPLACES

of

FAMOUS AUTHORS

G'day folks,

Ever wonder where the famous authors wrote their priceless pieces of literature? Many great writers have found
creative comfort while sitting at a desk. (Charles Dickens was so attached to
his that he had its contents shipped to his vacation home.) But a surprising
number of literary luminaries have ventured beyond the traditional perch to
create their ideal writing spots, whether that meant stepping into a bathtub or
trekking into the wilderness. Here are 13 of the most memorable.

• Every weekday, Wallace Stevens walked
2.5 miles to the offices of the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Co., where he
served as vice president. Between his doorstep and the office door, Stevens
composed poetry. He observed, “I write best when I can concentrate, and do that
best while walking.”• A 90-minute commute is a
painfully tedious necessity for many people, but for John le Carréit was
an uninterrupted opportunity to write. As an MI5 officer, le Carré spent his
long train rides from Buckinghamshire to London penning his debut novel, Call
for the Dead. Le Carré quipped, “The line has since been electrified, which
is a great loss to literature.”

• Sir Walter Scott
crafted “Marmion,” his bestselling epic poem, on horseback, in the undulating
hills near Edinburgh, Scotland. Though one might assume a leisurely pace is
necessary for creative concentration atop a horse, Scott preferred to
contemplate the lines of the poem at a faster clip. “I had many a grand gallop
among these braes when I was thinking of ‘Marmion’,” he recalled.• Gertrude Stein
discovered that the driver’s seat of her Model T Ford was a perfect place to
write. Shopping expeditions around Paris were particularly productive for the
writer. While her partner, Alice
B. Toklas, ran errands, Stein would stay in their parked car and
write.

• D.H. Lawrence
preferred to write outdoors, beneath the shade of a tree. He found a trunk to
lean against wherever he went, from pine trees in New Mexico to great firs in
Germany’s Black Forest. Discussing his predilection, Lawrence noted, “The trees
are like living company.”

• In 1917, Virginia Woolf and her
husband, Leonard, started a small publishing company in their basement. Despite
the new venture, Woolf did not give up writing. Every morning she walked down
to the basement, and strode past the printing press and into a storage room
with a cozy old armchair. Her pen would fly while the press whirred in the next
room.• Agatha Christie had
two important demands for the renovation of her mansion. She informed her
architect, “I want a big bath, and I need a ledge because I like to eat
apples.” Christie constructed her plots in a large Victorian tub, one bite at a
time.• Instead of hopping in an
actual tub, every morning Benjamin
Franklin took what he called “tonic baths” in the open air of
his bedroom—he’d shed his clothes and work naked, for up to an hour.

• Edith Wharton spent
her mornings in bed, but she wasn’t dozing. She’d sit up and work, still
nestled beneath the covers, with an inkpot by one arm and a little dog snuggled
near the other. Wharton let each page flutter to the ground, and the pile was
later retrieved by a maid for the secretary to type.• Marcel Proust spent
his nights writing in bed. However, the busy Parisian street outside his
apartment window began to take its toll on his nocturnal routine: Noise drifted
up to his room while he was trying to sleep during the day. Proust’s solution
was to line the walls with cork, and it worked.• James Joyce, for
several years, wrote in bed at night while lying on his stomach. He used a blue
pencil and wore a white coat. According to Joyce’s sister, the coat “gave a
kind of white light,” which helped the author, whose sight was failing, see the
writing on the page.

• Maya Angelou writes in
the isolation of a hotel room. To ensure there are no distractions, she
requests that everything be removed from the walls. Her own essential tools,
which she brings into the bare room, include yellow pads, a dictionary, a
thesaurus and a Bible. She used to also bring sherry and an ashtray.• Dame Edith Sitwell had
a ritual of lying down before she set pen to paper. Rather than reclining on a
bed or a couch, though, she chose to climb into an open coffin. In those
morbidly tight quarters, the eccentric poet found inspiration for her work.

Addendum: Here is a photograph of Hemingway's writing place, courtesy of Scott Skipper. The photograph was recently taken by his wife, Hurricane Sandy, in Key West, Florida.